“I understand,” I mumbled, not meeting her gaze, my thought focused on Dylan’s gift which explained why Charlie and my mom had accepted him so readily.

She grabbed a handful of my hair and wrenched my face up, her lips against my ear. “For your sake I hope you do, Isabella, because there are worse things than death…and I can do all of them.”

She tossed me aside, my body slamming against the hard marble, forcing a grunt out of my mouth. “You make it clear to Dylan that you want nothing to do with him. And here’s some more incentive.” She knelt down in front of my sprawled out form. “He reported back to Aro immediately. Aro commanded him to further ingratiate himself into your life. To bring you back here. To make you love him so much that you would eagerly become a vampire and live here forever.” Her hand ran through my hair brushing it out of my face. “You see, Aro is using you just like Edward used you, and now Dylan. You are nothing more than a pawn to Aro. Never forget that, Isabella. He wants his old friend back. He wants the talent that the Cullen coven possesses. And he believes you are the key to acquiring them.”

She was gone from the room in a blur, the only proof that she’d been there was the door slowly creaking closed and the bruise spreading across my hip from my fall to the floor.

–

I spent that night and the whole next day alone, aside from the human child that brought me my meals. I knew this was the calm before the storm and I was wound up so tight worrying what the next hour would bring that I couldn’t even settle down and read to pass the time.

My head was a crowded place. The band-aid that I’d used to patch up the wound that Edward had inflicted had once again been ripped off, and all of my black thoughts were circling in my head along with new ones of Dylan, and my fears about  what the Volturi were planning on doing to me and how they might use me to harm the Cullens.